Nepal’s smugglers cash in on India’s love of gold

India’s obsession with gold has been blamed for its massive current account deficit, but government efforts to restrict its imports have only given smugglers a golden opportunity

By Deepak Adhikari / AFP, KATHMANDU

A saleswoman arranges a gold necklace inside a jewelry showroom in the southern Indian city of Kochi on April 16.

Photo: Reuters

After a long drive from across the border in China, the white truck arrived in Nepal’s capital at dawn with a seemingly innocuous cargo of Chinese-made clothes. However, hidden in a cylinder inside the vehicle’s front bumper was the latest haul of gold smuggled from Tibet — bars weighing about 35kg and worth millions of US dollars on the black market.

Nepal’s police were waiting for the truck and its 24-year-old driver just inside the city, after tracking them for several days along the highway that connects Nepal with China.

“We had been informed from our reliable source that a consignment of gold was on its way from Khasa [a border town in Tibet],” said Uttam Kumar Karkee, a senior superintendent who led the operation in July.

Nepal’s police and inland revenue department say the illegal shipment was ultimately destined for neighboring India, where seizures of smuggled gold, including from its closest neighbors, have reportedly soared this year.

The seizures in India coincide with the government’s campaign in recent months to deter legal imports of the precious metal — including by raising import duties.

Under pressure over a faltering economy, the government is trying to break the country’s obsession with gold. Imported in vast quantities, it is partly blamed for blowing out the current account deficit and pushing down the rupee to record lows.

In Nepal, police have seized far more illegal shipments bound for India this year compared with last year. Its organized crime unit cannot say whether Indian consumers and traders are turning to the cross-border black market as a direct result of efforts to discourage legal imports.

However, making it harder and more expensive to import gold certainly presents smugglers with opportunities.

“There is a growing demand for gold in India. So the smugglers are cashing in on that,” department’s deputy director-general Anand Raj Dhakal said.

A total of 69kg of smuggled gold was seized in Nepal in the past six months, most of it from Tibet, compared with 18kg for the whole of last year.

However, that is only the tip of the iceberg, says Nepal Police spokesman Nawaraj Silwal, who estimates only 10 percent of all smuggled gold is confiscated.

The seizure in July, which led to the arrest of several Kathmandu businessmen, came hot on the heels of another police bust in the middle of May. Four men were arrested on Kathmandu’s outskirts, each with four bars of gold (16kg in total) in the soles of their shoes. This stash was also bound for India, police deputy superintendent Chakra Bahadur Singh said.

In a typical smuggling run, trucks transport the hidden gold overland from Tibet into Kathmandu, where the stash is shifted to freight trucks that ply the roads between Nepal and India, says Silwal, who singles out the Indian border town of Raxaul as a smuggling hub.

“The gold smugglers and peddlers use land routes with Nepal due to the open border with India,” Silwal said.

“Now, the gold mostly comes [overland] from China after we tightened security at Kathmandu’s airport,” he said.

“There is a huge demand for gold in India. We have learned that Indian men and women travel to the Nepalese border towns to buy gold when prices are cheaper in Nepal,” he added.

Some of it is probably bound for the Nepal market, where demand peaks during the local wedding season and Hindu festivals of Dashain and Tihar, according to gold traders.